There I was reading the obituary to Akira Ifukube, who composed the music to the Godzilla films and who has just died at the age of 91 when out of the corner of my eye I spotted this.  It sounds like a pleasant afternoon of family entertainment.  It seems to be a big hit in Turkey but I doubt it will do Billy Zane's career much good.  I think I will enjoy King Kong v Godzilla more.

From the BBC website entertainment section

It is rabidly anti-American, and it is the biggest draw in town.

With a budget of $10m (£5.7m), Valley of the Wolves Iraq is the most expensive film ever made in Turkey - and it is pulling record crowds.

At one of Istanbul's biggest multiplex cinemas the blockbuster is showing on five separate screens and nearly all the seats are sold out. It's the same story across the country.

"I'm back to see it for the second time already," says one student, waiting impatiently outside Screen 10.

"It is anti-American, but we already know what they've done in Iraq. That's the reality. Now we can see it on screen."

The movie opens with a real-life incident: the arrest in July 2003 of Turkish special forces in Sulaymaniyah, Northern Iraq.

The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint, with hoods over their heads. America later apologised, but it appears the offense ran deep.

At the time Turkey took the incident as national humiliation. In this film the fictional hero sets out for revenge.

From then on, the action pits good Turks against very bad Americans in a mix of fact and fiction with a deeply nationalistic flavour.

The film is proving to be a sensation at the box office

In one scene, trigger-happy US troops massacre civilians at a wedding party.

In another they firebomb a mosque during evening prayer. There are multiple summary executions.

And for the first time, the real-life abuses by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, are played out on the big screen.

Even the doctor - played by Gary Busey - is evil, removing human organs from Iraqi prisoners to send to patients in the US, Israel and Britain.

"Our film's a sort of political action," explains script-writer Bahadir Ozdener at the production company's stylish office on the Asian side of Istanbul.

"Maybe 60 or 70% of what happens on screen is factually true. Turkey and America are allies but Turkey wants to say something to its friend. We want to say the bitter truth. We want to say that this is wrong."

In a mainly Muslim country that has enjoyed a long strategic partnership with the US, Valley of the Wolves has sparked intense interest.

The US ambassador to Ankara was quizzed for his reaction to the film on a major news channel; even Turkey's foreign minister has felt moved to comment on it. Both were anxious to appear conciliatory.

The film is unashamedly anti-American

But the film clearly capitalises on a wave of anti-American feeling that peaked with the Sulaymaniyah controversy, but began to swell with preparation for the invasion of Iraq.

There's more

One sad fact of modernity is that in our rush toward "equality," we have (as women) insisted on scrubbing away at our femininity until men no longer are supposed to even notice that we are female at all. Everything is gender neutral and we have gutted our language of the commonplace niceties that used to accompany the acknowledgement of gender and age.

After having been addressed with the utmost disrespect by a young man whose boss stood by while it was occurring, I thought, "My God, young man, you do not address a woman in that manner and you certainly do not address a woman in your mother's age bracket in that manner."

Our culture has thrown out all distinction and with it the manners that rely upon distinction. Children are no longer taught codes of honor, and learn to make no distinction between people (that would be wrong), in fact, they are barely socialized.

The young man in question sat in a beautiful modern office in full view of the public in a tee shirt and jeans, long, stringy hair, with a scowling, resentful countenance.  It is obvious he resents his job and he resents the requirement for civility that comes with it as well. I shudder at the thought about how this boy would behave on a date, if they even have dates any more - just "hook-ups."

No manners required.

How will our girls ever learn to be women if our boys never learn to be men?

Diana West points out the illogic political correctness has placed on the trial of the notorious Abu Hamza al-Masri now being tried at the Old Bailey here.

"But even after mastering the heinous evidence, the jurors' task will be harder still. They will then have to make sense of the illogically contorted, politically correct legal arguments being mounted both for and against the defendant in order to exempt the role of Islam in modern-day jihad, or holy war.
    For the prosecution, David Perry says: "This is nothing more or less than preaching hatred and murder," which, he makes clear, has nothing to do with Islam.
    For the defense, Edward Fitzgerald says: "It is said he was preaching murder. But he was actually preaching from the Koran itself."
    Well, which is it, gentlemen? He's preaching murder that has nothing to do with Islam; or he's preaching the Koran that has nothing to do with murder. For people trying to fend off jihad in their midst, the question becomes a distracting conundrum.
But even after mastering the heinous evidence, the jurors' task will be harder still. They will then have to make sense of the illogically contorted, politically correct legal arguments being mounted both for and against the defendant in order to exempt the role of Islam in modern-day jihad, or holy war.
    For the prosecution, David Perry says: "This is nothing more or less than preaching hatred and murder," which, he makes clear, has nothing to do with Islam.
    For the defense, Edward Fitzgerald says: "It is said he was preaching murder. But he was actually preaching from the Koran itself."
    Well, which is it, gentlemen? He's preaching murder that has nothing to do with Islam; or he's preaching the Koran that has nothing to do with murder. For people trying to fend off jihad in their midst, the question becomes a distracting conundrum....

"...And that's the way they like it. Both the prosecution and the defense have decided that Islam plays no animating role in the modern jihadist movement of which Abu Hamza is a part. When the prosecutor describes Abu Hamza's preaching -- "holy war in the cause of Allah" as a "religious obligation" that includes the killing of non-believers -- he is describing the classic jihad ideology that has driven Islamic history; but he attributes it to Abu Hamza's idiosyncratic version of Islam. The defense, meanwhile, takes the same preaching -- "the language of blood and retribution," Mr. Fitzgerald says -- and declares it no different from any other religion's language.

    " In other words, whether or not Abu Hamza does hard time, jihad gets a pass."

The Australian has more on the aftermath of the Cronulla riots here.

First there were rapes, then there were gang rapes then there were riots: all perpetrated by Australia's latest arrivals, the "Lebs" or Lebanese Muslims, or Muslims in general.  The confusion as to what to call them, of course, lies in the fact that politically correct Australian media are absolutely insistent that the whole problem stems from the alleged "racism" of the locals.  Over 30 "white men" (read, non-Muslims) have been arrested for participation in the skirmishes with Muslims, while none of the Muslim Lebanese (who started the whole thing by beating up two lifeguards) have been arrested.

"Peter Debnam, in the riskiest political move of his five months so far as Opposition leader in NSW, took up the cause. He claimed the state Labor Government of Premier Morris Iemma had encouraged police to go soft on revenge attackers, most thought to be Middle Eastern, because of what he called Labor's political correctness."

First, the police claimed to have no evidence of the beatings of locals by "Lebs," but then a video surfaced clearly showing just such a beating by  "30 Lebanese bashing a bystander at Cronulla after the riot."

Police are backing off  "Lebanese" neighborhoods and not enforcing the laws of Australia there, because 1) political correctness imposes fear of law suits, 2) control of the police force has been given over to civilian ministries besotted by political correctness and 3) plain, old fashioned fear "of Lebanese gangs that, they say, have absolutely no respect for police, threaten to harm their families and have weapons they are quite prepared to use. "

No country can survive the loss of sovereignty from within.  The laws of Australia must be enforced everywhere, especially in immigrant neighborhoods.

The color of the resistance to Islamic expansion is blue.  As blue is the color of the sky and green the color of the earth, so our thoughts are higher than their thoughts, and our motives higher than their motives. 

Our blue scarf society page will be operational next week.